Apple Gobbles Up 98 Acres of Cupertino HP Land

Apple has purchased 98 acres of Cupertino real estate from PC maker HP. The San Jose Mercury Newsreported that Apple had purchased the campus, which is just a couple of miles from the company’s main campus on De Anza Blvd.

The purchase price for the deal hasn’t been revealed by either company, but the newspaper quoted local commercial real estate agents who said the space was worth US$300 million— or not quite $3 million per acre for those doing the math at home — minus whatever kind of discount Apple may have been able to work due to the slow economy and “depressed”real estate pricing in Silicon Valley.

In addition to being near 1 Infinite Loop, the land is also adjacent to another large land purchase Apple made in 2006. Counting that 50 acre purchase, Apple now has 148 contiguous acres of land it can expand into, though that land is intersected by a major highway and a surface street.

In the figure below, which is a poor imitation of the much finer map published by The Mercury News, you can see just how much more space Apple has acquired, though the company also (currently) leases many more buildings on De Anza and Stevens Creek Blvd. that aren’t in the areas marked as owned by Apple.

“We now occupy 57 buildings in Cupertino and our campus is bursting at the seams,” Apple corporate spokesperson Steve Dowling told the newspaper. “These offices will give us more space for our employees as we continue to grow.”

Apple’s Cupertino Digs Get Big

Apple is currently the world’s largest tech company (by value), and the company’s headcount is now 48,000 world wide, though that includes the many thousands of people that man the company’s growing fleet of retail stores around the world. Apple also maintains a major site in Austin, TX used for support and other services, and it now has a large data center the company is building in North Carolina.

Nonetheless, Apple’s main headquarters is in Cupertino, and the company’s engineering and design efforts are based in the city. With 170 acres (and counting), the company’s physical assets are a major part of Cupertino’s economy.

HP had announced during the summer of 2010 that it was leaving the property. The company has been consolidating its own operations in Palo Alto (where Apple CEO Steve Jobs actually lives), and no longer needed its Cupertino dwelling.